rend

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

transitive v. To tear or split apart or into pieces violently. See Synonyms at tear1.

transitive v. To tear (one's garments or hair) in anguish or rage.

transitive v. To tear away forcibly; wrest.

transitive v. To pull, split, or divide as if by tearing: "Chip was rent between the impulse to laugh wildly and a bitterness that threatened hot tears” ( Louis Auchincloss).

transitive v. To pierce or disturb with sound: a scream rent the silence.

transitive v. To cause pain or distress to: tales that rend the heart.

intransitive v. To become torn or split; come apart.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

v. To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst

v. To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force.

v. To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

intransitive v. To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split.

transitive v. To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst

transitive v. To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; tear asunder; split.

To remove or pluck away with violence; tear away.

Synonyms Rip, Tear, Rend, Split, Cleave, Fracture, Chop. In garments we rip along the line at which they were sewed; we tear the texture of the cloth; we say, “It is not torn; it is only ripped.” More broadly, rip, especially with up, stands for a cutting open or apart with a quick, deep stroke: as, to rip up a body or a sack of meal. Rend implies great force or violence. To split is primarily to divide lengthwise or by the grain: as, to split wood. Cleave may be a more dignified word for split, or it may express a cutting apart by a straight, heavy stroke. Fracture may represent the next degree beyond cracking, the lightest kind of breaking, leaving the parts in place: as, a fractured bone or plate of glass; or it may be a more formal word for break. To chop is to cut apart with a heavy stroke, which is generally across the grain or natural cleavage, or through the narrow dimension of the material: chopping wood is thus distinguished from splitting wood.

To be or to become rent or torn; become disunited; split; part asunder.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Middle English renden, from Old English rendan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English renden, from Old English rendan ("to rend, tear, cut, lacerate, cut down"), from Proto-Germanic *hrandijanan (“to tear”), of uncertain origin. Believed by some to be the causitive of Proto-Germanic *hrindanan (“to push”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱret-, *kret- (“to hit, beat”), in which case would relate it to Old English hrindan ("to thrust, push"). Cognate with Scots rent ("to rend, tear"), Old Frisian renda ("to tear").

Examples

But let us not believe that the bad old days are so far behind us that racially driven violence could not once again rend our social fabric.

In this passage, Oothoon's rhetoric of purity and defilement reveals her unwitting capitulation to Theotormon's ascetic dualism (which opposes chastity to harlotry), while her use of the verb "rend" in her instruction to Theotormon's eagles implies, most appallingly, an invited repetition of Bromion's act of rape.

Worries about Greek's debt crisis have roiled the oil market for months because of fears that it could rend apart the euro zone, thus damaging the broader global economy, curbing demand for crude oil and squelching investors' appetite for such risky assets as commodities.